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Question for the techies.

Within the last week or week and a half my graphics card has begun overheating again, similarly to how my last one did. This only happens when I run FFXI, it is always cool at all other times.

When not on FFXI it sits at around 40-50 degrees, but at times it can reach heats of up to 80-90 degrees when playing, and the only thing to stop it from overheating and crashing the PC is to remove the side cover and have an additional fan support it. Even with this, it can still top temperatures of 70+ degrees. The case itself has decent ventilation, with almost half of the side panel being a "mesh screen".

I don't know what info you need so I'm just going to give you as much as I know.

OS: Vista Home
Processor: Core 2 Quad - 2.4GHz
RAM: 2GIGs (DDR2)
Power Source: Max Total 585w
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD 4800 (512MB, PCI Express)

The system seems clean, I use Adaware and Spybot for spyware, and AVG for Antivirus. I've had this set up running for while now (6+ months) with no problems until very recently.

Any Ideas? Keep in mind I'm not super techie, so try to relay responses in layman's terms.

Thanks in advance!

Same with mine. Especially during the summer months my system will restart if it stays on too long.

Might want to get an air canister and blow any dirt from your fans and ventilation holes, sometimes collects and makes heat transfer harder.

Might also be that your heat transfer grease (that grease between the cpu/gpu and the heatsink/fan combo is drying up or something.

or just get it into a better ventilated room and a cooler room. (if there's no dust and other things)

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It seemed to be a dust issue.. I just recently cleaned it too!

I guess I'll have to check it out more often, thanks for the help!

Is it possible to get a small case fan and attach it so it blows directly on your graphics card? If you can rig up some kind of holder or bracket for it you can get fans for 10 bucks or so at best buy or newegg.com and they'll clip into a generic 4-pin power supply plug.

I have a fan attached to the backside of my (lower) optical drive compartment, blowing directly onto the card (taking air in from the front of the case), it dropped my graphics card temperature down about 15-20 degrees under stress/while game playing.

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Yep, it's usually a dust issue.
Anyway, you mentioned it was only when playing FFXI, is that including playing other games? If it's specifically hot when running FFXI compared to other modern games, I'd be worried something was wrong, otherwise, it's just that the GPU it taxed significantly more while a game is running.
Also, 70C isn't actually all that hot for a GPU. GPU temps can reach 90C and still be considered safe, unless perhaps it's a laptop, and causes injury from being on your lap
Typically GPU temperature isn't critical untill it tops 90C. On the other hand, rereading your post, that's not an absolute number, if a safety mechanism is tripping and shutting the card/system down, then yeah, it's too hot, but it sounds like cleaning out the dust fixed the problem?

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funny story. I posted that safely from my work computer, and when I got home today, I was greeted by a spazmastically flickering monitor this evening. I don't know for sure, but it sure seems like my graphics card went all FUBAR while I was away.
I followed my own advice and cleaned the dust out, unpluged/repluged all the stuff, but no dice, I think she might be fried. so it looks like I have to find a replacement once I make sure it's the card that's bad, bummer.

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